Manual Production Work Flow
This page shows our work flow for creating manuals.
Initial hearing
TECS staff will visit or call you as soon as possible to learn the details (purpose, target, current problems, specifications, deadline, etc.) for making a quotation. You are requested to prepare reference materials for us to use in our production process.
Submission of quotation, rough idea, proposal
We will create a quotation according to the information we gathered in the hearing session.
Depending on the project or according to your request, we will create and submit a rough idea such as the table of contents, proposal, or layout sample.
We will start working on the project after obtaining your approval on the quotation.
A basic contract and/or confidentiality agreement will be made as needed.
Information gathering
TECS staff will visit you to take pictures for creating illustrations or shoot videos for showing the operation procedures, as well as to study the operation procedures (We may request you for a lecture or guidance).
We may also request you to lend the sample product, but if it is difficult due to the product being at the development stage, we will use spec sheets and other documents to gather information.
Creation of manual structure, drafts, and schedule
We will create the manual structure, including the layout design, in a logical sequence. Discussion sessions will be held after the proposal. We will also calculate how much man-hour will be necessary, and submit the schedule.Text writing
Professional staff at TECS will write the text that’s easy to understand without ambiguity. Our writing conforms to various safety standards including PL Act and SG standard. The writing for industrial equipment conforms to IEC82079-1.
Creation of illustrations and use of photographs
The illustrators at TECS creates illustrations for clearest understanding while paying attention to what to draw at which angle. Photographs may also be used in cases where it is appropriate to use them. In the case of on-line manuals, we will suggest inserting videos and creating links to facilitate understanding. Also, we suggest the best solution such as a video manual that shows the operations with both videos and texts. Detailed illustrations are not always the best for manuals. Professional illustrators at TECS will judge omission and emphasis to highlight the important points.
Layout
Highlighting the important information
Most manuals contain a mixture of important information and supplemental information that is useful to know. If the important information is muted by all the other pieces of miscellaneous information, it would be the same as nothing being written.
Therefore, it is necessary to highlight the important points by using larger fonts, colors, and margins, so that the level of importance can be intuitively clear.
Especially, icons will be used for safety-related matters to call attention.
Making the information visually clear
We will make the information visually clear by combining illustrations and texts, and arrange them in such a way that the users can easily understand them.
Easy to see and read
We will use clear fonts and logical layout to create user-friendly manuals that are easy to see and read.
Delivery of final data
We can deliver various types of data including pdf, ai, eps, and indd.
On-demand printing
TECS provides an on-demand printing service, which is cost-effective for documents containing few pages and need few copies.
